No surprise, 80% of US adults do NOT want targeted ads. 24% think they have no control over information shared online.

How will US adults feel when they learn they have no control over sensitive electronic health information? Despite the new Omnibus Privacy Rule, there is still no way we can stop our electronic health records from being disclosed or sold. The only actions we can take are avoiding treatment altogether or seeking physicians who use paper records and paying for treatment ourselves. No one should be faced with such bad choices. There is no reason we should have to give up privacy to benefit from technology.

Today, the only way to prevent OUR health information from being disclosed or sold to hidden third parties is to avoid electronic health systems as much as possible. That puts us in a terrible situation, because technology could have been used to ensure our control over our health data. The stimulus billions can still be used to build trustworthy technology systems that ensure we control personal health information. Institutions, corporations, and government agencies should not control our records and should have to ask us for consent before using our them.

Quotes:

-“45% of U.S. adults feel that they have little (33%) or no (12%) control over the personal information companies gather while they are browsing the web or using online services such as photo sharing, travel, or gaming.”

-“many adults (24%) believe that they have little (19%) to no (5%) control over information that they intentionally share online”

-“one-in-five (20%) said that they only minimally understand (17%), or are totally confused (3%) when it comes to personal online protection”

-“When asked under what circumstances companies should be able to track individuals browsing the web or using online services, 60% say this should be allowed only after an individual specifically gives the company permission to do so.”

-“Just 20% of adults say that they want to receive personalized advertising based on their web browsing or online service use, while the large majority (80%) report that they did not wish to receive such ads.”

Americans are all victims of a massive hidden “surveillance economy” that collects and sells every bit of online information about us (and health information is the most valuable of all). This story is about the battle between the US data mining industry and the consumers, patients, and corporations that oppose secret data mining.

“Brendon Lynch, Microsoft’s chief privacy officer, said a recent company study of computer users in the United States and Europe concluded that 75 percent wanted Microsoft to turn on the Do Not Track mechanism. “Consumers want and expect strong privacy protection to be built into Microsoft products and services.”

It’s not surprising to see this attack by the data mining industry on Microsoft. There will be many more attacks as the public realizes the harms that are caused by unfettered corporate and government collection of personal information. Today’s surveillance economy is based on monetizing personal data, selling intimate minute-by-minute profiles of our minds and bodies.

On the Internet ALL your health searches about scary and stigmatizing illnesses, all searches or purchases of books on health, and all searches or purchases of medications and devices are tracked and sold.

It is impossible to search for health information privately via Google, etc.

Health websites take massive advantage of Americans’ powerful expectations that ALL healthcare providers put their interests and their privacy first—expectations which come from the traditional doctor-patient relationship and the ethics that have governed Medicine for 2,400 years (derived from the Hippocratic Oath).

Americans are not yet ready to believe that every aspect of healthcare in the US is profit-driven, rather than driven by the ethical codes all health professionals swear to at graduation: the promises to “do no harm” and to “guard their secrets”.

Americans are not yet ready to believe that Wall Street has taken over Medicine—and that instead of guaranteeing the strong health privacy rights Americans have under the law, Wall Street erases our rights to ensure shareholder profits.